Ours forever?

Cliff writes and interesting post about our online identities. The short summary is this – he posted a video for his staff use. He then deleted the account that held the video, only to find out that his video was cited in a paper.

I’ve come across this issue before. I’ve wanted to change my username for StumbleUpon which is different from every other professional account I have – but I know I can’t because so many people are connected to it.

Cliff asks:

How will we manage our online identities throughout our lifetimes?

What do we (as librarians and indexers) do about media that is constantly being updated/moved/deleted?

Where is that darn video?!?

I don’t have an answer to Cliff’s questions – but it does add to the problem of digital preservation we’re all facing.